Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 5, 2012
by the Rev. John Kirkley
Beginning with last Sunday’s Gospel lesson and continuing
through the last Sunday of August, we will be hearing almost all of John
chapter six. Since we celebrated the
feast of Saint James last week, we didn’t hear the first section of John six,
which is the story of the feeding of a crowd of 5,000 people with just five
loaves of bread and two fish, followed by the story of Jesus walking on the
water. The feeding story provides the
context for an extended and increasingly complex dialogue between Jesus and the
crowd, then between Jesus and the Jewish authorities, and finally between Jesus
and the twelve disciples about the true bread that satisfies our deepest
hunger.
You may recall that when Elizabeth preached the Sunday
before last, she noted that the lectionary reading from Mark’s Gospel omitted a
good chunk of Mark chapter six. What was
omitted was Mark’s version of the miraculous feeding and stroll across the sea
of Galilee, so that we could explore John’s version last week. Let me briefly recap the feeding story we
missed, since it gives rise to the theological discussion that follows.
It is interesting to note the differences between Mark and
John’s versions of the story.[1] In Mark, we are told that Jesus had
compassion for the crowd because they were like sheep without a shepherd. They were lost and couldn’t find their
way. So he began to teach them. When it drew late, his disciples urged him to
send the people away so that they could get something to eat. Jesus responds in the imperative mode, “You
give them something to eat.” They push
back, arguing that it would be too expensive to buy bread for 5,000
people.
Jesus then instructs them to share what they have, which
turns out to be a measly five loaves and two fish. They disciples obey, though I think we can
safely infer that they were not happy about it.
Then Jesus took the loaves and fish, blessed and broke the loaves, and
gave them to the disciples to distribute.
All ate until they were full, and there were still twelve baskets full
of leftovers.
It often is noted that Jesus’ action of taking, blessing,
breaking, and sharing the bread is replicated in each celebration of the Holy
Eucharist. We imitate Jesus in our
sharing of communion, at least, in an external sense. But there is another dimension of imitation,
an internal participation that is missing in this story. The disciples go through the motions of
imitating Jesus in feeding the crowd, but their hearts are hardened. They aren’t feeling it. There action remains at the level of
imitation rather than an actual participation in the flow of compassion.
Later, when Jesus walks on water and calms the storm, we are
told that the disciples were amazed – a stock phrase in Mark that ends many
miracle stories. But the miraculous
feeding doesn’t amaze them. Mark
underscores this with a second miraculous feeding story later in his narrative,
in which Jesus is again moved by compassion and the disciples still resist
sharing with the crowd, even though this time they have seven loaves and there
are only 4,000 people! They remain
unmoved by pity or awe. They obey
Jesus, but their relationship remains at the level of merely outward imitation.
John’s version of the story is very similar to Mark’s: a
crowd of 5,000 people, five loaves and two fish, twelve baskets left over. But in John’s telling, the gap between
imitation and participation, between following orders and being in the flow of
compassion, is exacerbated. The
disciples do not even share from their own resources; the loaves and fish
belong to a boy in the crowd. But even
more telling in John’s version is the crowd’s response.
Unlike the disciples, the crowd is amazed. They take Jesus to be a prophet, perhaps even
the promised messiah. They want to force
him to become king. Rather than imitate
Jesus in his compassionate response to human need, they wish to harness his
power for purposes of political domination.
Their relationship to Jesus, too, is completely external. They want their situation to change, but they
do not wish to be changed themselves.
They want a king, but Jesus has something else on offer.
Cut now to the day after the miraculous feeding, where
today’s reading from John picks-up. The
crowd is relentless and follows Jesus to Capernaum. They try to make small talk, but Jesus cuts to
the heart of the matter: “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not
because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but
for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give
you. For it is on him that God the
Father has set his seal.”
Like the crowd, we come looking for Jesus too. But what is it we want to find? The crowd
sought Jesus because they were impressed by his capacity to heal the sick and
feed the hungry. I suppose there are a
lot worse reasons to follow somebody around.
But they are missing the point.
These are but signs of a far greater possibility for
transformation.
The crowd sees the sign, but miss what is signified by it. They are like someone who sees a yellow
light and accelerates through the intersection.
They saw the sign all right, but missed it’s meaning: slow down! Sometimes, even when we know what the sign
means, we choose to ignore it because to pay attention to it would require us
to change, perhaps even to be inconvenienced in the short-term. We sacrifice the long-term benefit to
ourselves and others for the sake of immediate gratification.
The crowd follows Jesus, but they miss the deeper invitation
signified by his work in favor of immediate gratification. Jesus offers them eternal life – life lived
with wide open awareness of and participation in the very life of God – but
they just want to feel better and eat some bread; oh, and make Jesus king so
that their enemies can get what is coming to them. They settle for so little when Jesus wants to
give them so much more: himself.
The crowd begins to catch on a little bit. They want to know how to imitate Jesus: “What
must we do to perform the works of God?” they ask. The response that Jesus gives is somewhat
curious: “This is the work of God, that
you trust God sent me to you.” The word
“believe” would be better translated here as “trust” – it is an invitation to a
relationship with Jesus and not
simply assent to a theoretical proposition about
Jesus. What Jesus is asking may seem
easy on one level, not really doing anything at all. But the work of trusting another, of becoming
vulnerable to another, is in many ways the most difficult work because to trust
another is to open ourselves to being changed by our encounter with them.
The crowd quickly backpedals. They aren’t interested in what is signified
here: intimacy with Jesus such that we share in the very life of God. They remain stuck at the level of the signs
themselves: “Do another miracle! That’s what Moses did!” They want Jesus to prove himself again, as if
the signs already performed weren’t enough.
But no one, not even Jesus, can prove herself trustworthy outside the
risk of relationship itself.
The crowd backpedals, but Jesus will not let them go. He reminds them that all experiences of awe
and compassion come from God. It is God
who provides the true bread, which satisfies our deepest longing for eternal
life. The response of the crowd echoes
down through the ages and expresses our own profound desire: “Sir, give us this
bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am
the bread of life. Whoever comes to me
will never be hungry, and whoever trusts me will never be thirsty.”
“I am the bread of life.”
Here we find the very center of the Christian Gospel: the claim “that salvation is to be conceived
as an ongoing sharing in the life of God, in a deeper and deeper way, where to
share in the life of God involves, among other things, sharing in and
exercising the virtues of faith, love, and righteousness that are in God.”[2] The doctrine of the Atonement simply states
that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection makes participation in the life of God
available to us.
That doctrine does not specify how Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection accomplish this, though
many theories have been proposed to explain it.
John chapter six gives us a clue, however: trusting Jesus, opening ourselves to being in
relationship with him. This relationship
is the door through which we enter into life with God, a deeper and deeper
capacity to perceive and respond to reality as held in love.
As we listen to John chapter six in the coming weeks we will
explore this Mystery more deeply. Following
Jesus may be more than we bargained for.
There is something in us that would rather hold Jesus at a distance,
keeping the relationship purely external and instrumental. But Jesus wants to get under our skin. He wants to feed us with himself, with the
very life of God.
Imitation is not enough.
Salvation is participation.
Nothing less can satisfy our desire for God, or God’s desire for
us. Amen.
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